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Ability to capture a citadel.
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Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#1 - 2017-06-27 17:03:11 UTC
This isn't a fully fleshed out idea... more of a premise.

Right now with citadels you can destroy them... but there's no method for capturing them like you can an outpost currently.

Currently if you destroy a citadel... the stuff in the citadel is put in asset safety... and if there's no NPC station in the system the player loses 15% of the value to move them to a NPC station. The destroyer gets nothing.

I suggest that CCP should consider adding some sort of mechanic that rather than destroying a station allows a group to capture it and assign ownership to another corporation (at least in Sov Null... but perhaps everywhere).

This provides two benefits that might encourage more combat.

1. The people capturing the citadel get something in return for their effort that those destroying it do not... a citadel they can decommision and move or keep where it is.

2. The people capturing the station have the ability to negotiate with those who have assets in the station to buy docking rights to avoid the 15% fee.

It might also be good to allow the conquering entity to assign an additional percentage asset safety fee (say 5-10%) . This would go to the owners of the conquered station should those with assets choose to use asset safety to get their stuff back. This might be in addition to or simply be a part of the existing 15%... not sure what makes more sense.

Whatever the method for conquering the station... it should be more difficult than destroying it.

I know this idea is missing the actual mechanics for capturing a citadels. But the gist of it is that it feels like we need more of a reason to attack citadels.
mkint
#2 - 2017-06-27 17:12:06 UTC
Overall, I like it. I'd like it more if the previous occupants could "sabotage" it in some way. Some mechanic that either reduces the utility for the new owners, or makes it easier to recapture or destroy, at least for a period of time. It can't be all candy and roses for the conquerors.

Maxim 6. If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
Cade Windstalker
#3 - 2017-06-27 17:20:15 UTC
It's intentional that you can't capture a Citadel. The old Outpost capturing system was more of a code restriction than a 100% desirable gameplay decision.

Citadels are expensive and risky to deploy in hostile space. If you can capture one it's basically always the right decision to do so since if nothing else you can unanchor it and sell it.

These things are supposed to be a mineral sink. If they stop dying, which is exactly what capturing them would do, they stop being a mineral sink.
Agondray
Avenger Mercenaries
VOID Intergalactic Forces
#4 - 2017-06-27 17:38:36 UTC
We don't need to cap them, because they are numerous in space as is.

We need to keep a market for them and capping will not do that as the market saturates.

As is it takes to long to destroy and you get nothing for it unless you salvage, the 1 week of timers is just stupid for when they said we would see less timers.

"Sarcasm is the Recourse of a weak mind." -Dr. Smith
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#5 - 2017-06-27 18:07:18 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
It's intentional that you can't capture a Citadel. The old Outpost capturing system was more of a code restriction than a 100% desirable gameplay decision.

Citadels are expensive and risky to deploy in hostile space. If you can capture one it's basically always the right decision to do so since if nothing else you can unanchor it and sell it.

These things are supposed to be a mineral sink. If they stop dying, which is exactly what capturing them would do, they stop being a mineral sink.



The problem is that right now there's not a whole lot of incentive to destroy a citadel right now (other than kill-mails).

But I look at Providence and what seems to be happening with the upcoming removal of outposts (which are able to be captured). In a part of the year that normally has light activity... Providence is hopping. The belief is that people are getting ready to try to conquer chunks of the region before the outposts turn into to citadels so they can unanchor them and get dank isk.

Effectively... this is the only way you can capture a citadel in Eve... and it's leading to content.

I can understand the mineral sink idea... but if they're not being destroyed very much they aren't much of a sink.

How about this. Use Entosis Links (or something similar) to capture a citadel instead of blowing it up in the final timer. Once captured, the citadel cannot be repackaged... only the original entity that deployed the structure can do that. The capturing entity CAN self destruct the structure.

The capturing entity gets half of the payments made to asset safety to get stuff out of the citadel or retrieve assets from a destroyed citadel.

So if there are 20 billion in assets in a null sec citadel (other citadel with no NPC stations in system) and you capture it and self destruct it... the people using asset safety will pay 3 billion in asset safety... and the controlling alliance/corp that captured it gets 1.5 billion of that 3 billion.

This doesn't increase the amount the loser of the citadel pays... it simply gives some of what they lose to the "capturer" of the citadel. They can still blow up the citadels that serve no strategic purpose... but can capture ones that do. And they can profit off of going and capturing/blowing up citadels.

The lack of ability to repackage means many will simply blow them up after capturing... but rake in a good reward in the process. And that reward will make them more likely to go after other citadels... self destructing more... causing more citadel demand... which acts as a better mineral sink.

Thoughts?
Cade Windstalker
#6 - 2017-06-27 19:06:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Cade Windstalker
Scialt wrote:
Cade Windstalker wrote:
It's intentional that you can't capture a Citadel. The old Outpost capturing system was more of a code restriction than a 100% desirable gameplay decision.

Citadels are expensive and risky to deploy in hostile space. If you can capture one it's basically always the right decision to do so since if nothing else you can unanchor it and sell it.

These things are supposed to be a mineral sink. If they stop dying, which is exactly what capturing them would do, they stop being a mineral sink.



The problem is that right now there's not a whole lot of incentive to destroy a citadel right now (other than kill-mails).

But I look at Perimeter and what seems to be happening with the upcoming removal of outposts (which are able to be captured). In a part of the year that normally has light activity... Providence is hopping. The belief is that people are getting ready to try to conquer chunks of the region before the outposts turn into to citadels so they can unanchor them and get dank isk.

Effectively... this is the only way you can capture a citadel in Eve... and it's leading to content.

I can understand the mineral sink idea... but if they're not being destroyed very much they aren't much of a sink.

How about this. Use Entosis Links (or something similar) to capture a citadel instead of blowing it up in the final timer. Once captured, the citadel cannot be repackaged... only the original entity that deployed the structure can do that. The capturing entity CAN self destruct the structure.

The capturing entity gets half of the payments made to asset safety to get stuff out of the citadel or retrieve assets from a destroyed citadel.

So if there are 20 billion in assets in a null sec citadel (other citadel with no NPC stations in system) and you capture it and self destruct it... the people using asset safety will pay 3 billion in asset safety... and the controlling alliance/corp that captured it gets 1.5 billion of that 3 billion.

This doesn't increase the amount the loser of the citadel pays... it simply gives some of what they lose to the "capturer" of the citadel. They can still blow up the citadels that serve no strategic purpose... but can capture ones that do. And they can profit off of going and capturing/blowing up citadels.

The lack of ability to repackage means many will simply blow them up after capturing... but rake in a good reward in the process. And that reward will make them more likely to go after other citadels... self destructing more... causing more citadel demand... which acts as a better mineral sink.

Thoughts?


I think your thinking here is a bit backwards.

First off, Citadels are being destroyed quite a bit. A quick glance at zKill will show you that. The poster-child for Citadel spam is Providence and since Citadels went live it's lost more than double the number of Citadels and ECs that are currently anchored there.

If CCP goes through and does a balance pass on the reinforcement and timers, especially for Medium Structures, then it's very likely the pace of destruction will only increase.

These things aren't supposed to be rare or killed *that* commonly. After all if only very large groups or those affiliated with large groups can keep a Citadel up then the game gets rather boring rather quickly for everyone. The idea that Citadels being relatively common is a problem is entirely subjective, and the idea that "Citadel spam" is going out of control is unsupported by the evidence.

By the way, for contrast there used to not be a single High-Sec moon without a POS for roughly 10 jumps in every direction from Jita. We haven't even come close to putting that many Citadels in the same area.

As for Provi...

The reason that Provi is being targeted right now is because the Citadels that are going to be appearing there are valuable and going to be very limited in total number, so groups are looking to try and secure a few. Whether they unanchor them later or not is another thing entirely, since they'd lose the rare rigs on them if they do so.

If you made it possible to capture regular Citadels it wouldn't drive the kind of conflict we're seeing over Provi, it would result in larger entities picking on smaller ones to steal their assets, because that's the most profitable way to run things. No one would be fighting over Provi for even a few dozen Fortizars, the losses in ISK wouldn't be made up for it in gains.

Also the ability to flip strategically important Citadels is one of the reasons this is so broken as a concept. With that you don't even need to build your own base, you can just steal your enemy's and simultaneously deny them assets while gaining an instant base, no anchoring time needed.

This whole idea of "knocking over Citadels for fun and profit" is just a massive perverse incentive. It creates bad gameplay, it won't lead to good fights, and it creates a strong Incentive for players to go around knocking over much smaller entities for their Citadels because it's profitable, especially in HIgh Sec.
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#7 - 2017-06-27 20:27:27 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:


I think your thinking here is a bit backwards.

First off, Citadels are being destroyed quite a bit. A quick glance at zKill will show you that. The poster-child for Citadel spam is Providence and since Citadels went live it's lost more than double the number of Citadels and ECs that are currently anchored there.

If CCP goes through and does a balance pass on the reinforcement and timers, especially for Medium Structures, then it's very likely the pace of destruction will only increase.

These things aren't supposed to be rare or killed *that* commonly. After all if only very large groups or those affiliated with large groups can keep a Citadel up then the game gets rather boring rather quickly for everyone. The idea that Citadels being relatively common is a problem is entirely subjective, and the idea that "Citadel spam" is going out of control is unsupported by the evidence.

By the way, for contrast there used to not be a single High-Sec moon without a POS for roughly 10 jumps in every direction from Jita. We haven't even come close to putting that many Citadels in the same area.

As for Provi...

The reason that Provi is being targeted right now is because the Citadels that are going to be appearing there are valuable and going to be very limited in total number, so groups are looking to try and secure a few. Whether they unanchor them later or not is another thing entirely, since they'd lose the rare rigs on them if they do so.

If you made it possible to capture regular Citadels it wouldn't drive the kind of conflict we're seeing over Provi, it would result in larger entities picking on smaller ones to steal their assets, because that's the most profitable way to run things. No one would be fighting over Provi for even a few dozen Fortizars, the losses in ISK wouldn't be made up for it in gains.

Also the ability to flip strategically important Citadels is one of the reasons this is so broken as a concept. With that you don't even need to build your own base, you can just steal your enemy's and simultaneously deny them assets while gaining an instant base, no anchoring time needed.

This whole idea of "knocking over Citadels for fun and profit" is just a massive perverse incentive. It creates bad gameplay, it won't lead to good fights, and it creates a strong Incentive for players to go around knocking over much smaller entities for their Citadels because it's profitable, especially in HIgh Sec.


Well, first off... it wouldn't be profitable in high or low sec (if they have NPC stations). Since the reward would be from the asset safety fee... and that fee only gets charged if the asset location doesn't have a NPC station in it... it would really only impact null-sec and a few other random systems. Wormholes don't have asset safety so it wouldn't impact them either.

Everywhere else would essentially work as it does now.

So... if you look at null-sec citadel losses... in June so far you have:

Great Wildlands - 12
Fountain - 8
Catch - 8
Pure Blind - 7
Esoteria - 7
Curse - 5
Venal - 5
Syndicate - 5
Providence - 4
Cloud Ring - 3
Tenerfis - 3
Scalding Pass - 3
Malpais - 2
Immensea - 2
Tenal - 2
Paragon Soul - 2
Stain - 1
Wicked Creek - 1
Etherium Reach - 1
Tribute - 1
Kalvela Expanse - 1
Querious - 1
Feythabolis - 1

So... in 27 days we've had 85 citadels lost in all of null sec. That's not a lot when you consider the number out there. I'm not completely familiar with much of null outside of the easily available region of Providence, but of the 4 destroyed in providence, I believe 3 were destroyed prior to being put online. 3 of those were citadels attempting to anchor in providence by "invading" forces.

I'm not sure how to tell it from the KM's... but killing an onlining citadel is a very different (and much easier) prospect from killing a citadel that has been put online. I don't really think that factors into the discussion to be honest. Everyone wants to smash a citadel before it goes online. People will take the time to smash a citadel that makes it online inside their space. Going through the difficulty of destroying onlined citadels in the space of others... It doesn't FEEL like that happens very often, but I can't find numbers to prove or disprove it.

The point of giving the capturing or destroying group the ability to take some of the asset safety is to encorage them to invade other regions. Most people believe the lack of wars in null sec are causing universal economic problems in eve. Giving a an added reason to destroy citadels helps with that.
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#8 - 2017-06-27 20:34:20 UTC
A quick scan suggest 6 or 7 of the last 10 null sec citadels destroyed were destroyed before going online. If that holds true across the board than you're looking at around 45 null-sec citadels this month where people took time to actually destroy them.

The main system I hang around at in Providence has something like 10-15 citadels in it. And it's not the most populated system by far. That's like 4 systems worth of citadels a month. There are something like 3,500 null sec systems.
Matthias Ancaladron
Imperial Shipment
Amarr Empire
#9 - 2017-06-27 20:41:37 UTC
mkint wrote:
Overall, I like it. I'd like it more if the previous occupants could "sabotage" it in some way. Some mechanic that either reduces the utility for the new owners, or makes it easier to recapture or destroy, at least for a period of time. It can't be all candy and roses for the conquerors.

Yep. Self destruct mode that bubbles and explodes for 1000km aoe, and you need dust 514 mercs to insert and take control and shut down the self destruct before it goes off and successfully capture the station. At least thats how it could have been for keepstars if CCP didn't mess up dust514
Cade Windstalker
#10 - 2017-06-27 21:32:12 UTC
Scialt wrote:
Well, first off... it wouldn't be profitable in high or low sec (if they have NPC stations). Since the reward would be from the asset safety fee... and that fee only gets charged if the asset location doesn't have a NPC station in it... it would really only impact null-sec and a few other random systems. Wormholes don't have asset safety so it wouldn't impact them either.

Everywhere else would essentially work as it does now.


You're letting someone *steal the Citadel* which can then be unanchored and sold on the market. That's the payout here... also High Sec still has asset safety complete with fees.

Scialt wrote:
So... in 27 days we've had 85 citadels lost in all of null sec. That's not a lot when you consider the number out there. I'm not completely familiar with much of null outside of the easily available region of Providence, but of the 4 destroyed in providence, I believe 3 were destroyed prior to being put online. 3 of those were citadels attempting to anchor in providence by "invading" forces.

I'm not sure how to tell it from the KM's... but killing an onlining citadel is a very different (and much easier) prospect from killing a citadel that has been put online. I don't really think that factors into the discussion to be honest. Everyone wants to smash a citadel before it goes online. People will take the time to smash a citadel that makes it online inside their space. Going through the difficulty of destroying onlined citadels in the space of others... It doesn't FEEL like that happens very often, but I can't find numbers to prove or disprove it.


The problem of Citadels being a bit too much of a slog to kill is its own problem and completely separate from the idea of capturing Citadels or otherwise rewarding their destruction. One should not be used to solve the other. Rewarding the slog doesn't make the slog go away or make it better, it just incentivizes the bad gameplay more.

As for the number of Citadels destroyed you should take a look at historical POS losses and compare them to Citadel losses. Purely in Towers lost POSes account for roughly 2-300b a month on average. When you factor in modules that goes up but probably not more than twice. That puts POS tower losses at something in the realm of 600b a month. Citadels and ECs across Eve have averaged something like 1.4t in losses since the new year.

Scialt wrote:
The point of giving the capturing or destroying group the ability to take some of the asset safety is to encorage them to invade other regions. Most people believe the lack of wars in null sec are causing universal economic problems in eve. Giving a an added reason to destroy citadels helps with that.


This really really isn't needed. Players in Eve will always find something to fight over. If nothing is provided they'll find something.

Providing this sort of easily abused incentive, essentially turning war into a for-direct-profit endeavor, will just hurt smaller entities by turning them into prey to be farmed for ISK and hurting their ability to play the game. At least right now these sorts of groups are just a source of fights and kills rather than having their assets farmed.

Scialt wrote:
A quick scan suggest 6 or 7 of the last 10 null sec citadels destroyed were destroyed before going online. If that holds true across the board than you're looking at around 45 null-sec citadels this month where people took time to actually destroy them.

The main system I hang around at in Providence has something like 10-15 citadels in it. And it's not the most populated system by far. That's like 4 systems worth of citadels a month. There are something like 3,500 null sec systems.


My response to this is sort of "yes, and?". How many POSes do you think died each month and how many of those were offline? Expecting entire systems worth of Citadels to be wiped out, especially in the absence of a major war, is not reasonable. In fact if that were happening it's likely that the situation would be considered unhealthy.

Also as I stated previously, the issue of Citadel timers being too aggressively defensive is a separate issue to this, and this is not a way to solve that as it doesn't actually address the issue.
Axure Abbacus
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2017-06-27 23:33:27 UTC
They put so much effort to improve the cinematic experience of structure explosions.

The make a cool song for to to grind structure to, "bring on the the wrecking machine!"

!!!BOOM!!!

It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid.
GROUND XERO
The Legion of Spoon
Curatores Veritatis Alliance
#12 - 2017-06-28 05:55:18 UTC
Guess it would end up with even more "fees" for NCPL ...like we allready have with keepstars!

NCPL (Necromonger of new Eden) will make EVE great again!
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#13 - 2017-06-28 12:44:12 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
Scialt wrote:
snip


You're letting someone *steal the Citadel* which can then be unanchored and sold on the market. That's the payout here... also High Sec still has asset safety complete with fees.

Scialt wrote:
snip


The problem of Citadels being a bit too much of a slog to kill is its own problem and completely separate from the idea of capturing Citadels or otherwise rewarding their destruction. One should not be used to solve the other. Rewarding the slog doesn't make the slog go away or make it better, it just incentivizes the bad gameplay more.

As for the number of Citadels destroyed you should take a look at historical POS losses and compare them to Citadel losses. Purely in Towers lost POSes account for roughly 2-300b a month on average. When you factor in modules that goes up but probably not more than twice. That puts POS tower losses at something in the realm of 600b a month. Citadels and ECs across Eve have averaged something like 1.4t in losses since the new year.

Scialt wrote:
snip


This really really isn't needed. Players in Eve will always find something to fight over. If nothing is provided they'll find something.

Providing this sort of easily abused incentive, essentially turning war into a for-direct-profit endeavor, will just hurt smaller entities by turning them into prey to be farmed for ISK and hurting their ability to play the game. At least right now these sorts of groups are just a source of fights and kills rather than having their assets farmed.

Scialt wrote:
snip


My response to this is sort of "yes, and?". How many POSes do you think died each month and how many of those were offline? Expecting entire systems worth of Citadels to be wiped out, especially in the absence of a major war, is not reasonable. In fact if that were happening it's likely that the situation would be considered unhealthy.

Also as I stated previously, the issue of Citadel timers being too aggressively defensive is a separate issue to this, and this is not a way to solve that as it doesn't actually address the issue.


First... if you read my second post I quickly backed off of the idea of allowing capturing corporations to repackage the citadel. I can see how that would influence the markets in odd ways. The idea would be that only the original group that puts the citadel online can repackage it... a capturing force could only keep it or self destruct it.

Since the capturing entity would only get isk from the asset safety process... there would rarely be any isk to get from low sec or high sec. Only in systems with no NPC stations. When you have a station in system, there is no cost for asset safety (unless this changed at some point).

The idea that "players will always find something to fight over" isn't exactly true. A lot of the economic problems are coming from the fact that null-sec has become pretty stagnant. Yes, people send subcap fleets in providence for some pew-pew... because that's what people do to fill time. But there's been very little full-blown conquering of space for quite a while. Instead, people are just skirmishing while milking their space for isk. The only "sov based" stuff on the horizon is completely about being able to take the new citadels dropping from the change to outposts... which is what made me think of this topic.

Part of the reason is that there's relatively little reason to kill citadels. They don't give you anything. The process of taking one over is time consuming. Other than a KM that looks great... there's no actual benefit. Trying to think of this from the PL or Goon perspective (entities who are already entrenched in null)... what's the motivation to go invade their neighbors space? They've got good ratting/mining/moons. They're not overcrowded in the space they're in. They can fly a fleet into other space and get fights without bothering taking down structures. And if they do... their enemies get all their stuff teleported to lowsec at a 15% fee and the winning side gets... a kill mail. What's the point?

My belief is that there's an issue with the citadels causing stagnation in terms of conquering space in Null. With POS's, you used to get drops when you blew them up. With citadels... you get nothing. I don't think we can put asset safety back in the bag... so this is an attempt to bring back some incentive on the part of aggressors to blow up citadels. Perhaps by giving the goons or PL or Brave or NC or someone a REASON to blast through null destroying enemy structures... they'd do it. And that would be good for EVE. Destruction drives our economy.

As for your numbers... if they are accurate and Towers (when they were the standard) were destroyed at 600b a month and Citadels were destroyed at 1.4t so far this year... that pretty much shows the problem.

600b a month x 6 months = 3.6t... and we've only had 1.4t with Citadels.

The change doesn't cause the losing side to lose more than they do now... they still lose 15%. It doesn't impact anyone in a system with a station that they can send their goods to. If I understand asset safety properly, it doesn't effect you if you're in a system with other stations you can send your stuff to as that appears to be free of charge.

What it will spur is groups to wipe out all the structures in a system... or effectively CONQUER it. I think null needs that incentive.
Cade Windstalker
#14 - 2017-06-28 14:06:11 UTC
Scialt wrote:
First... if you read my second post I quickly backed off of the idea of allowing capturing corporations to repackage the citadel. I can see how that would influence the markets in odd ways. The idea would be that only the original group that puts the citadel online can repackage it... a capturing force could only keep it or self destruct it.

Since the capturing entity would only get isk from the asset safety process... there would rarely be any isk to get from low sec or high sec. Only in systems with no NPC stations. When you have a station in system, there is no cost for asset safety (unless this changed at some point).


They could also strip off the modules and sell those, without the 50% drop chance risk of destroying the Citadel. Plus unless you're going to restrict the transfer of a Captured Citadel they could still sell it off to someone else that way, and if transferring it gets rid of the unachoring restriction then they just bounce it to an alt and unanchor it that way.

If you need to restrict all of that just to keep this remotely balanced that's a good indication that this idea has more problems than benefits.

Also one of the major benefits to a Citadel is that you can have a dock-up in a place with no stations. So great, you've only disincentivzed Citadels in the places where they should be most used... High Sec systems with no stations, most of Low, and all of Sov Null.

Scialt wrote:
The idea that "players will always find something to fight over" isn't exactly true. A lot of the economic problems are coming from the fact that null-sec has become pretty stagnant. Yes, people send subcap fleets in providence for some pew-pew... because that's what people do to fill time. But there's been very little full-blown conquering of space for quite a while. Instead, people are just skirmishing while milking their space for isk. The only "sov based" stuff on the horizon is completely about being able to take the new citadels dropping from the change to outposts... which is what made me think of this topic.


It's always proven true in the past. Right now Null isn't stagnant, it's recovering and regrouping. It does this every time there's some kind of major war, because big and long campaigns that don't end cause burnout, so Null groups always have periods of heavy activity followed by a lul in the action.

The current economic problems are purely a result of bad PvE balance as a result of buffs to certain classes of ships. The indicators of these problems have persisted through the recent conflicts. Your so called "stagnant" null sec isn't the cause.

Scialt wrote:
Part of the reason is that there's relatively little reason to kill citadels. They don't give you anything. The process of taking one over is time consuming. Other than a KM that looks great... there's no actual benefit. Trying to think of this from the PL or Goon perspective (entities who are already entrenched in null)... what's the motivation to go invade their neighbors space? They've got good ratting/mining/moons. They're not overcrowded in the space they're in. They can fly a fleet into other space and get fights without bothering taking down structures. And if they do... their enemies get all their stuff teleported to lowsec at a 15% fee and the winning side gets... a kill mail. What's the point?

My belief is that there's an issue with the citadels causing stagnation in terms of conquering space in Null. With POS's, you used to get drops when you blew them up. With citadels... you get nothing. I don't think we can put asset safety back in the bag... so this is an attempt to bring back some incentive on the part of aggressors to blow up citadels. Perhaps by giving the goons or PL or Brave or NC or someone a REASON to blast through null destroying enemy structures... they'd do it. And that would be good for EVE. Destruction drives our economy.


I certainly agree that Citadel spam is currently acting as a deterrent to larger scale fighting, but as I said earlier that's a problem with the grind to kill Citadels, not with any rewards for killing them. You don't need to heavily incentivize the killing of Citadels to make it less painful. That still makes it a **** sandwich, just one you're paid to eat, and that's not good for the long term health of the game.

There's no need to make destroying Citadels have a big profit motive. As has already been pointed out repeatedly. If you make it so that you either lose a large chunk of stuff when you lose a Citadel, or your enemies benefit from asset safety, then the logical thing to do is stage out of NPC Null stations, which would be bad for both Sov Null and NPC null.

Scialt wrote:
As for your numbers... if they are accurate and Towers (when they were the standard) were destroyed at 600b a month and Citadels were destroyed at 1.4t so far this year... that pretty much shows the problem.

600b a month x 6 months = 3.6t... and we've only had 1.4t with Citadels.

The change doesn't cause the losing side to lose more than they do now... they still lose 15%. It doesn't impact anyone in a system with a station that they can send their goods to. If I understand asset safety properly, it doesn't effect you if you're in a system with other stations you can send your stuff to as that appears to be free of charge.

What it will spur is groups to wipe out all the structures in a system... or effectively CONQUER it. I think null needs that incentive.


You seem to have miss-read what I wrote and failed to check the numbers yourself.

Citadels have lost 1.4t ON AVERAGE *PER MONTH* compared to a raw 300b for POS towers, which I'm estimating at 600b with POS mods since most towers don't even have anything on them when they die.

That's more than double the per-month value destroyed in Citadels as opposed to POSes.
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#15 - 2017-06-28 14:46:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Scialt
The division of posts into blocks for response may work well initially, but it makes it really difficult to respond if you divide all your points up.

I'm having a little trouble understanding what you're arguing though as you seem to take contradictory points depending on which specific piece you're discussing.

You say you don't want to incentivize killing low-sec or high-sec citadels... but you want to make citadels much easier to destroy... which will increase the amount of killing of low-sec and high-sec citadels.

You say null isn't stagnant... but then you say citadel spam is a deterrent to large scale fighting. That's kind of what I mean when I say it's stagnant because of citadels.



Look... here's the issue in a nutshell.

We have "new corp citadels" where the need is for them to not be easy or desireable for large groups to smash for profit.
We have "sov holder citadels" that act as a deterrent for large scale fighting.

Anything that reduces the deterrent for the latter has the potential to make the smashing of the former more likely. The point of tying it to asset safety is you give at least some ability for the smaller citadel owning groups to locate their operations in systems with NPC stations to allow them to be protected from the change to try to help the stagnation caused by citadels in null. If you just make citadels easier to smash... that hurts the high-sec and low-sec types way more.


As for the numbers... I wish I knew where you were getting them. I'd like to see stuff May of 2 years ago with POS compared to this past may with citadels. POS's (at least back in 2009) dropped stuff as far as I remember. I don't know if they do now as I took a long break and they could have changed in the interim. People still based things in Null out of POS's despite that.

Citadels were introduced in April of 2016, right toward the end of the goons being pushed out of the north. They relocated before citadel spam really became an issue. Same is true with TEST and CO2 having to relocate to the South. All of that pretty much began before Citadels though. The last 6 months have been largely quiet... and citadels are proliferating in that time with relatively little aggression going on.

I think what we're seeing is a cheaper way to accomplish what Providence did by putting an outpost in almost every system. It's always been a really annoying defensive tactic for those invading, which is why with only a couple of small breaks CVA has pretty much been able to hold that space. Until the upcoming station->citadel change... it's just never been worth it to invade Providence because of how annoying Provibloc has made it to do so. Nobody bothers.

The thing potential driving invasion of Providence now... is profit. There's an incentive to take systems to get those citadels expected to be worth quite a lot. That profit potential existed before citadels with POS's dropping stuff. The potential to at least deny access to resources existed with outposts... but that's going away now too with outposts going away. After the outposts disappear... I'm not seeing a lot of incentive to take space (at least not for the entities that already have good space).

Do you agree that this problem exists? At times it sounds like you do and just disagree with the solution. But at other times you seem to think it's not a problem.

Anyway... sorry for the text blob.
Cade Windstalker
#16 - 2017-06-28 18:00:05 UTC
Scialt wrote:
The division of posts into blocks for response may work well initially, but it makes it really difficult to respond if you divide all your points up.

I'm having a little trouble understanding what you're arguing though as you seem to take contradictory points depending on which specific piece you're discussing.


There isn't a contradiction in what I'm saying here. I get how you might think that, but there's a difference between actively rewarding something (giving the attacking party a portion of any asset safety payments) and making it easier to do something.

To take an extreme example, ship destruction. If I cut all ship EHP by 10% I've made it easier to destroy ships, but I haven't significantly incentivized the destruction of ships. No one who was going to destroy a ship before is going to not now, and very few people who weren't before will now.

On the other hand if suddenly the destroying party gets 10% of the value of every ship they destroy as ISK I've significantly incentivized the destruction of ships even though I've made it no easier. For example someone could now smartbomb the 4-4 undock and turn a profit if they're smart about it.

This same sort of logic applies to Citadels. Simply making it easier to destroy Citadels doesn't significantly incentivize doing so on its own. Similarly giving people ISK for destroying Citadels doesn't remove the current problems with the timers, but it may cause people with no reason to fight Citadels previously to do so now. Especially if someone finds a way to exploit the mechanics you're proposing, as I've already pointed out previously.

Scialt wrote:
You say you don't want to incentivize killing low-sec or high-sec citadels... but you want to make citadels much easier to destroy... which will increase the amount of killing of low-sec and high-sec citadels.

You say null isn't stagnant... but then you say citadel spam is a deterrent to large scale fighting. That's kind of what I mean when I say it's stagnant because of citadels.


Also, point of order here, I never said "much easier to destroy" I said the current frustration factor was a problem. I think there are ways to solve this without making Citadels significantly easier to kill. I just agree that the current system of two one-week timers isn't doing much good for the game.

There's also a difference between Citadel spam deterring fighting, and it being the cause of the current state of Null. The last two wars have already demonstrated that people will kill Citadels if they want something that they're in the way of. Killing these things just for the sake of it isn't necessarily something to be incentivized. A large scale Citadel genocide certainly isn't a good thing to be incentivized, that would kill a lot of play in Null.

Scialt wrote:
As for the numbers... I wish I knew where you were getting them. I'd like to see stuff May of 2 years ago with POS compared to this past may with citadels. POS's (at least back in 2009) dropped stuff as far as I remember. I don't know if they do now as I took a long break and they could have changed in the interim. People still based things in Null out of POS's despite that.


I said before, zKillboard.

Control Towers Stats: https://zkillboard.com/group/365/stats/
Citadel Stats: https://zkillboard.com/group/1657/stats/
EC Stats: https://zkillboard.com/group/1404/stats/

May of 2015 saw 260b in Control Towers dead, compared to roughly 1.4t in Citadels dead in May of this year. Even factoring in POS mods Citadels are seeing more value destroyed than POSes ever did.

Scialt wrote:
Do you agree that this problem exists? At times it sounds like you do and just disagree with the solution. But at other times you seem to think it's not a problem.

Anyway... sorry for the text blob.


I think that the current slog required to kill a Citadel is a problem, but I don't think it's really responsible for the current lul in Null, certainly not entirely and I highly doubt in majority.

Also, as I said above, I don't think actively incentivizing the destruction of Citadels with an ISK reward is a good idea for reasons I elaborated on above. It's very likely that that sort of setup would result in unhealthy second order effects and beyond that I just don't think it's needed.

Again, as I said before, there is a distinct and important difference between making something easier and placing an active incentive on the activity. The two are not equivalent and will have different effects.
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#17 - 2017-06-28 19:39:37 UTC
I think I see why the numbers for POS's seem so low. Too much of the value is outside the control tower.

For example... in may of 2015:

263b for control towers

as well as

467b for ship maintenance arrays
34b in assembly arrays
10b in silos
13b in moon harvesting
5b in hangar arrays
15b in design labs
12b in research labs and hyasoda research labs
6b in reprocessing arrays and intensive reprocessing arrays

Plus defensive structures... all of which are included in the citadel loss but not in the control tower loss.

There are a lot of defensive structures... but for example there were 14b in losses of shield hardening arrays in May of 2015. I don't know enough of the names for POS defensive structures to look at all of them.

This also doesn't take into account the two options for killing POS's... destroy the object (which generates the above km's and gives the possibility of those structures dropping loot) or destroying the tower and scooping the modules above... which has no visability on KM's. I wonder how many moon harvesting arrays were scooped compared to the 13b in isk destroyed in May of 2015.

I think it's safe to say that more losses were happening in may of 2015 with POS's than in May of 2017 with citadels. Just the kills of various POS structures approaches 1t and that doesn't include any scooping. And those losses resulted in drops for those doing the destroying... either from scooping the arrays/labs/etc surrounding the tower or from drops from things like ship mainenance arrays.

That either suggests that adding the isk incentive causes no difference in behavior (which neither one of us seem to believe... you suggest it will cause wonton destruction of small corp citadels, while I believe it would cause more space conquering in null), or perhaps there was a lot more scooping of structures going on with POS kills that we have no record of. We do know that 1640 towers were killed in May of 2015 compared to 555 Citadels and EC's this May. People are still prioritizing the killing of POS towers though... probably because they drop stuff and are easier to kill. We still had over 1000 towers killed in may.
Cade Windstalker
#18 - 2017-06-28 22:06:07 UTC
That's why I doubled the value of losses for an estimate, though it seems that was a little low due to the value in SMAs. Most other POS mods though are fairly low value, and even adding all of that up you're still comparing roughly 800b to 1.4t, so the value still swings in favor of the Citadels, because contrary to popular belief Citadels are actually pretty stupidly expensive compared to POSes.

Also you can't scoop anything that has contents, that's why SMAs are almost universally destroyed, so most of the actually inherently valuable POS mods can't be scooped.

The value of POS sticks and modules from May of 2 years ago doesn't come close to the combined value of Upwell structures today. You would need to find another ~600b in dead POS modules for that to be the case. Plus we still don't have moon mining off of POSes so that's going to be another big jump in Upwell Structure death.

Seriously, check your math...

You're also missing that Citadels are not equivalent to POSes, they're taking over the function of Outposts as well, and they're designed in such a way that you can live out of them. Paying your enemies for everything you get out with asset safety puts a damper on that. That's also significantly different from POSes, the vast majority of which have little to nothing of value in them and it's immediately obvious whether it's worth the time to kill the stick, even if it's offline.
Nevyn Auscent
Broke Sauce
#19 - 2017-06-28 23:47:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Nevyn Auscent
Scialt wrote:

That either suggests that adding the isk incentive causes no difference in behavior (which neither one of us seem to believe... you suggest it will cause wonton destruction of small corp citadels, while I believe it would cause more space conquering in null), or perhaps there was a lot more scooping of structures going on with POS kills that we have no record of. We do know that 1640 towers were killed in May of 2015 compared to 555 Citadels and EC's this May. People are still prioritizing the killing of POS towers though... probably because they drop stuff and are easier to kill. We still had over 1000 towers killed in may.

Most POS towers die with just an empty stick with no modules. Occasionally defences die.
The SMA kills are very rare, look at the value and you'll find that its a few very high value kills making that up, not a consistent stream of regular value kills, because people simply don't put value into POS towers except in WH's, where loot also drops from Citadels, (& I'm not sure if that loot shows properly on the KM's, never killed a Citadel in WH space so can't confirm either way).

So, you are equating a dead stick POS in highsec perhaps to a Citadel kill. In both cases 99% of the time we are only talking the base structure.
Null you might get a bit more from defence mods, but even there it's almost never going to be a high value SMA or something since that gets cleared 99% of the time if there ever was something there to begin with.

If you want an easier way to reduce Citadel spam, remove the 0% asset safety for a Citadel in the same system. Make it 5% or 2% or 1%, still cheaper than the 15% option, but still some sting. Then spamming Citadels doesn't let you keep your stuff for free, and every time one goes down that you were using it costs. So it becomes a less effective strategy for defence since it bleeds your own isk for your assets as well as your citadels.
Scialt
Corporate Navy Police Force
Sleep Reapers
#20 - 2017-06-29 12:57:43 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
That's why I doubled the value of losses for an estimate, though it seems that was a little low due to the value in SMAs. Most other POS mods though are fairly low value, and even adding all of that up you're still comparing roughly 800b to 1.4t, so the value still swings in favor of the Citadels, because contrary to popular belief Citadels are actually pretty stupidly expensive compared to POSes.

Also you can't scoop anything that has contents, that's why SMAs are almost universally destroyed, so most of the actually inherently valuable POS mods can't be scooped.

The value of POS sticks and modules from May of 2 years ago doesn't come close to the combined value of Upwell structures today. You would need to find another ~600b in dead POS modules for that to be the case. Plus we still don't have moon mining off of POSes so that's going to be another big jump in Upwell Structure death.

Seriously, check your math...

You're also missing that Citadels are not equivalent to POSes, they're taking over the function of Outposts as well, and they're designed in such a way that you can live out of them. Paying your enemies for everything you get out with asset safety puts a damper on that. That's also significantly different from POSes, the vast majority of which have little to nothing of value in them and it's immediately obvious whether it's worth the time to kill the stick, even if it's offline.


Well you're at 800b not including all defensive structures for POS's (Zkill doesn't appear to have a group for that and I frankly don't know the names of more than a few of them). It also doesn't include anything scooped.

As far as the scooping... I frankly have no idea how to judge that. Ship assembly arrays strike me as something likely to be scooped for example. In may of 2015 34b worth of them were destroyed. Is the amount scooped half-again that amount? Double it? Ten times? Frankly, I don't know how you'd tell. Same goes with something like a compression array. Only 6b destroyed... but how can you know how many are scooped? As an estimate, I used double the value in destroyed stuff other than towers... but there's absolutely no way to tell if that's too high, too low or dead on.

But the big point is that there was and still is economic incentive to kill POS's. And even today POS's are killed at double the rate of citadels. In part because it's easier... but also in part because there's incentive.

Also... a good point was raised by Wormhole citadels dropping loot.

of the 206 citadel losses so far this month, 77 of them were in wormholes (the only place with a financial incentive to kill citadels) . Those KM's throw off the analysis... because they work more like POS's do as opposed to citadels outside of wormholes. A much higher percentage so far has been an online citadel as opposed to one killed in the process of onlining... which makes sense as it's much easier to wait until your connecting wormholes are low traffic before dropping a citadel.

To me... given the smaller percentage of eve's population that lives in wormholes compared to high sec, low sec and null, that the actual financial incentive of destroying citadels in wormholes does lead to more destruction of citadels... even though they're almost all going to require several weeks of work and annoying logistics with shifting wormholes.

A good chunk of EVE's destruction of online citadels seems to be because in some part of space a financial incentive exists to do so. I know there are strategic incentives as well (trying to take over someone else's hole)... but those incentives exist in sov null space too... but it simply doesn't seem to happen as much compared to the number of citadels that are in null-sec/wormhole space.
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